A Chinese researcher said he successfully helped create the world’s first genetically edited babies – two twin girls born this month – by using a tool that allowed him to alter their DNA, according to a report on Monday.
The researcher, He Jiankui, said he modified the embryos for seven couples during fertility treatments, saying his intent was to make sure the newborns would have a gene that would be resistant to HIV.
“I feel a strong responsibility that it’s not just to make a first, but also make it an example,” He told the Associated Press. “Society will decide what to do next.”
But He did not publish his findings in a journal where they could be examined by other experts, and there is no independent confirmation of his claim.
He announced it on Monday to one of the organizers of a gene-editing conference that begins Tuesday in Hong Kong and in an interview with the Associated Press.
He wouldn’t identify the parents of the twins and wouldn’t provide information where they live or where he carried out his work.
A US scientist participated in the procedure in China, the wire service reported, but such gene editing is banned in the United States because the changes could be passed down through generations and harm other genes.
Some scientists quickly condemned He.
“It’s unconscionable … an experiment on human beings that is not morally or ethically defensible,” Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of Pennsylvania gene editing expert, told the AP.
“This is far too premature,” said Dr. Eric Topol, who heads the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California. “We’re dealing with the operating instructions of a human being. It’s a big deal.”
In China, more than 120 scientists posted a letter on social media condemning He.
“The project completely ignored the principles of biomedical ethics, conducting experiments on humans without proving it’s safe,” said Qiu Zilong, a neuroscience researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai who wrote the letter, the South China Morning Post reported.
“We can only describe such behavior as crazy,” the letter said.
But geneticist George Church of Harvard University defended He for trying to halt HIV, calling it a “major and growing public health threat.”
“I think this is justifiable,” he said.
He studied at Rice and Stanford universities before heading back to his homeland to open a lab at Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzen.
The researcher said he experimented on editing mice, monkey and human embryos for several years in his lab and concentrated on HIV because it is a huge health problem in China.
The university said He “violated academic ethics and standards” and would investigate his work.
He used a tool, called CRISPR-cas9, that scientists around the world have been employing for years to work on DNA by either implanting or removing genes to create desire changes.
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